Chapter 5: Affinities
A young man rode his horse, his short black hair glistening with sweat.
His forehead creased as he tried to keep his mind off the discomfort, focusing on the feeling in his palms. Every few seconds, he released the gathered mana, trying to gather a bit more of it with each attempt and to compress it to an even tighter ball before letting go. Riding made concentrating a challenge, but it was the only way he’d found to keep his thoughts occupied. And he had managed to pull it off – for the most part. At least until his horse stepped on something and the bump made him wince.
Elaine hadn’t said much over the last couple of days. Well, if he excluded her frequent apologies. She’d already told him how sorry she was over falling asleep a million times. And here she was, approaching him for the million-and-first.
SPLASH
A beautiful azure ribbon snaked towards him, gently caressing the wounds on his legs. It felt cool and soft, soothing the sting briefly. Still, it couldn’t heal him. Back at home, life users were a copper a dozen, and any one of them could patch him up rather easily. Hell, it would take baldy less than a second if he deigned to waste his mana on him. Sadly, both of his escorts for this trip had the water affinity instead. Such was the cruelty of genetics. He’d have to put up with this for another week.
“Percy… I’m so so, so sorry!” she said again, as he raised his hand to stop her.
By now he felt a bit bad seeing her squirm. He was tempted to undersell his injuries to make her feel better. After all, the only reason she and her dad were accompanying him in the first place was because she had pleaded to their grandpa for his sake. But Percy wasn’t the best actor. He couldn’t downplay the pain. Besides, learning from this mistake would serve her well in the future. Even prodigies couldn’t be careless in the wilderness.
“Just be careful from now on.” is what he ended up saying.
However, upon seeing her downtrodden expression, he couldn’t help himself.